Insights from the SLA Fellows – Wei Wei

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New SLA Fellow Dennie Heye has started to interview other SLA Fellows to find out what we can learn from them. The third in this series of SLA Fellow interviews is with Wei Wei. Wei Wei is currently the Chair of SLA Information Outlook Advisory Council and former Engineering Librarian, specializing in the areas of computer science, computer engineering and information systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Wei WeiWho within the profession was the first to inspire you?

There are many outstanding individuals within the profession that have inspired me.  As a University Library Associate at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the mid 80s, I was mentored by the science librarians at its Natural Sciences Library.  It was them who first introduced me to the Special Libraries Association (SLA).  And I have been its active member ever since.  Within this society of special librarians, I have enhanced my professional skills at all levels and have been inspired by some outstanding active SLA members, such as Wilda Newman, Richard Hulser, Eleanor MacLean and Sylvia Piggott.  As the past chair, the Science and Technology Division of SLA provided me with a solid training background, as well as concrete organizational and management skills.  Being a chair or co-chair of several SLA committees, the opportunities have enabled me to gain better understandings of organizational visions and goals at a larger scale.

If you think about the future of our profession – what keeps you awake at night and why?

Recently I spotted an article by an annoyed librarian, entitled, “Library Science Majors as Unemployed as High School Dropouts” published by the online Library Journal.  In its June 8th, 2012 online issue, Forbes also suggests, “Library and information science degree-holders bring in $57,600 mid-career, on average. Common jobs for them are school librarian, library director and reference librarian, and there are expected to be just 8.5% more of them by 2020.” The low pay scale and estimated growth projections make library and information science a less desired master’s degree for jobs right now.  Articles such as these keep me awake at night.  I have been pondering if the information and library science profession is slowly dying.  Could the profession still attract young people with bright and forward thinking minds in the future?  Would the profession one day be replaced by the state of art new technology?  A “paperless society” didn’t seem to be possible over 20 years ago.  Now it is so real and is in front of us. What does it mean to our profession?  What should we do as a profession to change the outlook of current environment that we are in.

Do you have ideas how information professionals could start disruptive innovation in their organizations?

As an academic engineering librarian, I had attended several faculty retreats organized by the School of Engineering at University of California, Santa Cruz.  My role at the retreats was to listen, to learn and to be back with the information related to the new goals, the new five-year plan for the school, its past achievements and outstanding issues facing the school and faculty; afterwards, I was asked to share the results with the library staff.  Though, I gained some useful information from these retreats, my appearances did not have a huge impact on the Engineering School.  As an academic librarian, I was not a “value network”.

Instead of being a warm body at faculty meetings or retreats, a librarian should be more out-spoken, be more interactive and be one of the key components on a five-year curriculum planning team for a school.  A librarian should be one of the key-note speakers at faculty retreats. Using current technological tools, such as Piktochart, Easelly, Infogr.am, new ways to visualize data for information professions, a librarian should create infographics and share vital information with its research communities.

If you were given a chance to go 10 years back in time, what would you do differently in your job and professional development?

  • To be more visible in my research community
  • To attend, be active and be a presenter in my field at the professional conferences organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), etc.
  • To market our information profession as other demanded professionals do

In order to remain relevant in the future, what should SLA start doing, stop doing, or do more of?

One says “location, location and location!”, when buying a house.  SLA should yell loudly “Marketing, marketing and marketing!”, when thinking about its image.  In the future, SLA should not only emphasize its name or dressing for success (I don’t mean they are not important), but also should sharpen its tones and shape its world image in order to truly convey who we are as a profession in the current environment, and what we can do and show to the world of information science.

About the author

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